joining me now is jonathan allen. >> the other john allen. >> the other john allen. all we're missing now is for someone to wake up from a coma in a hospital and reveal they were the rightful commander of the troops. i mean the thing, this has spiraled and seemingly almost out of control. the reality, of course, is that there are 68,000 troops in afghanistan, we have military conflict in the middle east, what does this say and do to the leadership on the defense side? >> look, unless you believe that these are the only men that could carry out these jobs well, then the defense infrastructure and the national security infrastructure of the united states should be relatively unaffected by this. there should be people that can come into those jobs and do those jobs well. if you believe these are the only men that can do those jobs to protect our country in the case of david petraeus, having him resign from the cia would have been a terrible thing and the president should have stopped him from doing it. in the case of general allen, stopping his promotion would be a terr